Preacher Begs Forgiveness - The Independent, 22nd June 2007

Ahead of the band's Sunday appointment in the mud of Glastonbury, the Manic Street Preachers' bass player, Nicky Wire, right, has issued an 'umble apology to the Festival's regulars.

In 1994, miseryguts Wire announced on stage: "They should build a bypass over this shithole." The crowd noise stopped. A tumbleweed could reportedly be heard twirling across the fields. His comment was only marginally less unpopular than his 1992 wish of death-by-Aids on REM singer Michael Stipe.

The Glasto comment "was supposed to be a joke," Wire explains to the NME. "As I was saying it I thought, 'This is going to be really funny.' Then this deathly silence descended on the place. Back then it felt like we were aliens whizzed in from Wales with absolutely nothing in common with anyone else there."